Aristide Briand: Defending the Republic Through Economic Appeasement
Robert Boyce, "Aristide Briand : defending the Republic through economic appeasement", Histoire@Politique. Politique, culture, société, n° 16, janvier-avril 2012, www.histoire-politique.fr Aristide Briand: defending the Republic through economic appeasement Robert Boyce Aristide Briand occupied a major place in the politics of the Third Republic. For nearly twenty years he was a prominent political activist and journalist. Then, upon entering parliament he was eleven times président du Conseil and a minister on no less than twenty-five occasions, participating in government almost continuously from 1906 to 1917, in 1921-1922 and again from 1925 to 1932. Never during his thirty- year parliamentary career, however, did he take responsibility for a ministry of commerce, industry or finance or participate in debates on fiscal policy or budget reform. It might be said, indeed, that of all the leading politicians of the Third Republic he was one of the least interested in economic issues. Since he repeatedly altered his political posture before and after entering parliament, his approach to economics is difficult to define. Nevertheless it is possible to identify certain underlying beliefs that informed his political behaviour and shaped his economic views. In order to analyse these beliefs, their evolution and their instrumentalisation, the present paper will treat his public life in three stages: the long period before entering parliament, the period from 1902 to the war when he established his reputation as a progressive political leader, and the period from 1914 to 1932 when he became France's leading statesman. As will be seen, changing circumstances led him repeatedly to alter his posture towards economic choices, but in the second stage he became associated with potentially important domestic social and economic reforms, and in the third stage with potentially important international economic reforms.
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